1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to natural language processing, and more particularly to systems and methods for identifying claims associated with electronic text.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, natural language processing systems may be utilized to process electronic text. Natural language processing may identify, for example, various file formats, character encoding schemes, parts-of-speech tagging, syntactic parsing, and so forth. Reasons for processing the electronic text range from storing and retrieving information to evaluating the electronic text to create and manage taxonomies.
Vast numbers of claims are made every year by numerous organizations, companies and individuals. For example, millions of product and service claims are made every year by many thousands of companies marketing through various communications channels. Governments, agencies and politicians regularly communicate claims to the general public and voters. Increasingly, marketing, advertising, communications and messaging is conducted through electronic channels, including traditional channels such as television and radio, and emerging electronic channels, such as the Internet, as well as cell phones and other handheld or wireless communications devices.
Claims of various kinds are of interest to millions of shoppers, marketing and purchasing professionals, public relations and communications professionals, business and political strategists, various organizations, the general public, and regulators, such as the FTC, FDA and SEC. For example, product and service claims may be used by shoppers to find suitable products and make buying decisions, by marketers to assess competitive offerings and position product offerings, by purchasing agents to support purchasing decisions and contracts, and by regulators to find and stop deceptive advertising and marketing practices. Political claims may be used by political strategists and candidates to characterize opponents and stake out positions on issues. Other kinds of claims are useful to various audiences.
Claims may be located and analyzed via manual review or search engines. Unfortunately, manual review and analysis of the electronic text is typically time consuming and inconsistent, and search engines often produce voluminous results.